A birthday gift for Buster Posey: 3-run blast gives Giants thrilling Opening Day win

CINCINNATI — For most of Thursday evening, the Giants failed to follow their spring training script. The past several weeks in Arizona, the talking points were all too clear — throw first-pitch strikes, excel in situational hitting, limit the strikeouts.

In their 2025 season opener, the Giants weren’t doing much on any of those fronts.

And you know what? It didn’t matter.

That’s because Wilmer Flores cleaned up the mess in the most splendid and dramatic way imaginable. Logan Webb’s command issues? The offensive inefficiencies? All the noncontact that prompted a whopping 17 strikeouts?

Wilmer to the rescue.

The Giants beat the Reds 6-4 at Great American Ball Park not because of everything they focused on in training camp but because Flores crushed a three-run homer in the top of the ninth inning to give birthday boy Buster Posey a happy 38th and his first win as president of baseball operations.

“There’s still a lot to like about Flo,” said manager Bob Melvin, who along with Posey was publicly supportive of Flores throughout the offseason, even though the 33-year-old designated hitter had a dreadful 2024 as he battled a knee injury.

Before the final inning, the Giants weren’t exactly practicing what they had preached in spring training.

— First-pitch strikes: Starter Logan Webb faced 22 batters and threw just 13 first-pitch strikes.

— Situational hitting: Mostly nonexistent because Reds starter Hunter Greene and company wouldn’t allow it. The Giants had just one at-bat with runners in scoring position, and LaMonte Wade Jr. struck out.

— Limiting strikeouts: The Giants K’d 17 times, the most they’ve compiled in a season opener, at least in recorded history dating to 1901.

Those would have been the themes of the night if not for Flores, whose mighty swing off Ian Gibaut ignited a celebration down in the dugout and up in the management suite, where Posey and other officials from the baseball operations department took in the opener.

“It feels good helping the team right away,” said Flores, who had just four homers last season, one in his first 50 games. “I was talking with [Willy] Adames and saying I never hit an Opening Day homer, and it happened.”

Situational hitting finally became a thing in the ninth inning, when it mattered most. Jung Hoo Lee, after falling behind no balls and two strikes, drew a one-out walk. Matt Chapman grounded a single to right field that sent Lee to third. One out later, Patrick Bailey singled up the middle to tie the game 3-3.

Then came Flores’ three-run homer, a moment that will go down as one of the most memorable in the history of Giants openers. It wasn’t the only takeaway from a gorgeous, albeit somewhat chilly, night along the Ohio River. Here are some other observations from the Giants’ triumphant opener:

Heliot Ramos was close to becoming the big highlight in a losing cause. Instead, he was simply the setup man to a wildly successful finish. His 11-pitch at-bat off Greene in the fourth inning ended epically with a two-run, opposite-field homer.

Ramos was trying to go up the middle against the hard-throwing Greene but made solid contact on a low-and-away, 99-mph fastball that cleared the wall in the right-field corner.

That he displayed opposite-field power wasn’t a surprise because last season at Oracle Park, Ramos became the first right-handed hitter to homer on a fly into McCovey Cove.

“I have confidence I could hit the ball out the other way,” Ramos said. “I’m not going to lie, the splash gave me a lot of confidence last year too.”

Ramos is into making Giants history, beyond the splash hit. Last year, he became the team’s first homegrown outfielder selected to an All-Star Game since Chili Davis in 1986. Thursday, he became the 19th Giant in 19 years to start an opener in left field — the curse of Barry Bonds? — and said he wants to alter the trend and start next year’s opener too. He’s certainly on the right track.

By the way, the laundry list of left fielders since Bonds includes Dave Roberts, Fred Lewis, Mark DeRosa, Pat Burrell, Aubrey Huff, Andres Torres, Mike Morse, Nori Aoki, Angel Pagan, Jarrett Parker, Hunter Pence, Connor Joe, Alex Dickerson, Austin Slater, Joc Pederson, Blake Sabol, Michael Conforto, and Ramos.

After requiring 27 pitches to get out of his first inning, ace Logan Webb pulled his glove to his face and screamed something that’s probably not suitable to repeat here. He didn’t at all like the way he momentarily lost his feel for his pitches. He struck out his first two batters but walked his next two and gave up a run-scoring single to Jeimer Candelario.

Webb gave up another hit to Candelario in the third, this one a two-run single.

“Something weird happened after those first two batters,” Webb said. “I was amped up. I thought I was a strikeout guy for two batters. I’ve got to be better than that. I was a little erratic. Three walks for me is not acceptable. What we preached is throwing strikes, and I did not set the tone with that today.”

Just 46 of Webb’s 78 pitches were strikes, and he lasted just five innings. The bullpen kept the Giants in the game as unsung heroes Randy Rodriguez, Erik Miller and Tyler Rogers combined for three hitless innings, and Ryan Walker earned the save after yielding a run in the ninth.

Reds shortstop Elly De La Cruz is one of the most watchable players in the game in large part because of his speed, which was a big factor in the Reds’ two-run third inning. With two runners aboard and one out, Adames fielded Gavin Lux’s grounder and immediately considered forcing De La Cruz at second. But De La Cruz was too fast to the bag, so Adames had to pivot and rush a throw to first. Too late. Bases loaded.

The slight hesitation was costly. Had Adames committed to first base all along, he could have retired Lux for the second out. Instead, Candelario came up with the bases loaded and lined a single to right.

“I wanted to get Elly out of the picture because he’s fast,” Adames said. “I wanted to get him out, off the bases. But it was a mess.”

It wasn’t a great debut for Adames, who signed a seven-year, $182 million contract in December. He was 0-for-4 with three strikeouts.

The Giants are trying to develop their own running game, and at some point, they’ll call up speedy Grant McCray, who led the team in steals during spring training. He was one of the final cuts.

“Are we elite speed? No,” Posey said. “But hopefully we’re going to run the bases with purpose and take advantage of extra bases when we can, even if it’s not just purely based on speed.”

Tyler Fitzgerald is the fastest man on the roster but didn’t reach base in the opener. Again, it didn’t matter because Wilmer came to the rescue.

Posey can certainly read the room. When a young-ish baseball writer from the Cincinnati area asked him about his memorable grand slam here in the clinching game of the 2012 Division Series, he said, “Sorry if you were a kid when that happened.”

Charlie Goldsmith, the writer in question, was 13 in 2012 and attended that memorable Posey game. Now he works at various outlets including the Dayton Daily News, the same newspaper that for decades has employed Hall of Fame baseball writer Hal McCoy, who on Thursday attended his 52nd Opening Day.

Posey, who turned 38 Thursday, felt much different in his first opener as an executive versus all his openers as a player.

“I don’t have near the butterflies I had as a player,” said Posey, who relaxed and enjoyed the pregame pageantry. “I never did that as a player because I was hyperfocused on the game.”

As a player, Posey won three World Series titles. As an exec, he’s 1-0.

“I think each day is going to present something new,” Posey said. “In comparing this role to a player’s role, each day as a player, I pretty much had it mapped out in my head what was going to happen. In this role, I think you have an idea, but most of the time you don’t.”